Tasks, Jobs & Work Orders

This chapter covers Quasar's service management system: tasks, jobs, work orders, and billing your customers for labour and materials.

Why Define a Task?

A Task defines what needs to be done for a customer — a service call, a repair, an installation, a project. A task on its own is simply a record of work to do: it names the customer, describes the work, lists the employees and inventory items involved, and can carry a reminder date.

The real value appears when you attach Jobs to the task. Each job is an individual work assignment for one employee, tracking their sign-in and sign-out times and their hours worked (Regular, Overtime, Holiday). When the work is done, those hours become billable: Quasar pushes them onto a Sales Order (the work order), and the work order converts into a customer Invoice.

When to use a task: any time the work itself needs to be managed, scheduled, or tracked before (or instead of) ringing up a sale — service calls, repairs, installations, deliveries, projects, and any work where you bill a customer for an employee's time. Tasks are also used without any billing at all: as directed assignments for staff, warehouse pick orders, or even simple reminders and company-wide messages (controlled by the task type).

When you don't need one: simple over-the-counter sales go straight to a customer invoice at the till or in the back office. If there is no work to schedule, no time to track, and nothing to accumulate before billing, a task adds nothing.

Setting Up: Task Types and Billing Items

Task Types

Every task has a Task Type, created on the Task Type Master (browse them on the Task Type List). The type controls three behaviours:

Combining these settings gives you everything from a personal to-do list (Private, no WIP, no Jobs) to full project management with cost tracking and multi-job assignment (Selected, WIP, Jobs). For billable service work you want Jobs turned on; add WIP when costs should accumulate on the task until you bill — for example, month-end billing of accumulated work.

Employee Billing Items

Before an employee's hours can be billed, their Employee Master record needs the Hourly Billing Items tab filled in: an inventory item for Regular Hours, Overtime Hours, and Holiday Hours billing. When hours are billed, these items become the line items on the work order, with the hours as quantities and the item's price as the rate. If any of the three billing items is not configured, Bill Hours stops with an error naming the missing item.

Creating and Working a Task

1. Open the Task Master (Card File → Task Master) and create a new task. The number is auto-assigned (global across all stores).
2. Choose the Task Type, the Store, and the Customer (optionally a Customer Unit for a department, branch, or piece of equipment, and a CRM contact).
3. Give the task a short Name (e.g., "HVAC Repair — 123 Main St") and describe the work in the Task Description on the Main tab.
4. Set a Remind On date if the task should resurface as a reminder for the assigned employee.
5. On the Included Employees tab, list the employees who should see and/or work on the task, with per-employee instructions. Add Employees bulk-adds from a group.
6. On the Affected Items tab, link the inventory items — materials, parts, or service items — relevant to the task.

Day to day, a task moves through acknowledgement and completion stamps rather than a rigid status workflow:

• Read Date/Time — set automatically when the assigned employee opens the task, or by clicking Set Read. Tracks acknowledgement.
• Complete Date/Time — set by Set Complete. Marks the task as finished.
• Who will view? on the task itself can narrow visibility further (Private / Selected / All).

Tracking Time with Jobs

When the task type supports jobs, assign work from the Main tab's Assigned Jobs list or the All Task Jobs tab:

• Add Assignment / New Job — opens the Job Master with the task, customer, store, and employee pre-filled (and locked).
• Edit Assignment / Edit Job — re-opens the selected job (double-click also works).
• Delete Assignment — removes the selected job assignment.

On the Job Master, the employee records their time with Date/Time In and Date/Time Out. Hours Worked is calculated automatically from the sign-in/out times (and can be overridden), with a Round To option (No Round, Quarter Hour, Half Hour, Hour) controlling how the hours round for display and billing. The hours are split into Regular, Overtime, and Stat (Worked) hours, plus non-billable Allowance hours such as travel time. The Job Description says what is to be done; Describe Solution records the work performed, and Copy Solution To Work Order passes those notes onto the customer-facing work order.

The Task Master's All Task Jobs tab shows every job on the task with totals for worked, regular, overtime, and holiday hours — the live picture of unbilled labour on the task. A job's status is Held while active; it becomes Complete when its hours are billed and the work order is saved, which disables its billing buttons.

Billing: Hours to Work Order to Invoice

Step 1 — Bill Hours

When a job's hours are ready to bill, click Bill Hours — either on the Job Master itself, or for a multi-selection of jobs on the Task Master's All Task Jobs tab (Bill Job Hours). Quasar creates (or adds to) a Sales Order — the work order — using each employee's Regular, Overtime, and Holiday billing items as line items, with the hours as quantities. A confirmation prompt warns that the selected jobs will be set to Complete once the work order is saved. Creating work orders requires the CustomerSalesOrder create permission.

You can also create a work order manually — for example to charge materials used on the job — with Create Work Order on the Task Master's Work-in-Progress tab. That tab lists all the task's sales order lines with running tax and work-order totals; double-clicking a line opens the order.

Step 2 — Invoice the Work Orders

The Task Master's Invoice Work Orders tab is the billing hub. Select one or more work orders (Select All Work Orders helps) and click Invoice Orders. Quasar opens a customer Invoice pre-populated with all line items from the selected orders; a prompt offers to include the task description in the invoice comments. Posting the invoice sets the work orders to inactive, completing the Task → Job → Sales Order → Invoice pipeline.

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